in reply to those who urged a guard of regular troops, "I require no guard in the midst of the Vaudois." The king was most cordially welcomed, and, being deeply touched by his reception, ordered each company of the militia to pass before him according to their communes, and with their respective colours. He also gave an audience to the Vaudois Table, left money to be distributed among the poor, in which the Protestants shared; and to perpetuate the memory of this visit of September 24th, 1844, caused a fountain to be erected close by with the inscription, "Il re Carolo Alberto, al popolo che l'accoglieva con tanto affetto." "The king Charles Albert to the people who welcomed him with so much affection." This pleasing episode in the history of the Vaudois forms a fitting prelude to the advent of a yet more substantial token of good-will on the part of their sovereign. I mean that edict of emancipation which, while it did justice to the people of the valleys, also, by the circumstances of their inclusion, made the kingdom of Sardinia a true pattern of constitutional monarchy; kept her true amidst the perfidy and violence by which the sovereigns of other states withdrew on the morrow the boon of the yesterday, and in consequence reaped a harvest of anarchy and disorder; while brave Piedmont has not only remained firm as a rock, but has been gathering to itself, one by one, the minute subdivisions of the Italian peninsula, until at length we see its true and faithful sovereign, "il Re galantuomo," the monarch of all that stretches from the Tyrol on the north to Sicily on the south. "His sceptre rules and banner waves" from the shore of the Adriatic to the valleys of the Alps. And throughout the length and breadth of that land, whilst neighbouring countries, notably those most servile to the papacy, Spain and France, have been convulsed by terrors and paralysed by intestine and foreign wars, the tricoloured flag of the Italian kingdom floats triumphantly above the walls of ancient Rome, and such an era of peaceful contentment and commercial enterprise has begun as its proud cities and luxuriant plains have long been strangers to. Just as with regard to God's Israel of the East, so does it seem to have been with this modern Israel of the West. The nations who persecuted and despoiled the sons of Abraham have been despoiled themselves. The nations who befriended the Jews have risen to power and influence. Likewise the persecutors of God's faithful ones in the valleys of the Po, notably the priest-king and France, have been scourged; whilst the countries which befriended them in their long series of trials, the Protestant states of Germany, Holland, and our own land, have been distinguished by a constantly augmenting prosperity. Oh, that men were wise! Oh, that politicians would remember that it is righteousness which exalteth a nation. The thought that Piedmont became the Zoar of the living Church of God, when its members fled